


The Person I Thought I Was

by ameliacareful



Series: Strangers and Brothers [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean is discovering he's an awesome hunter, Dean was a firefighter, Dean was thrown out when he was 14, Gen, Sam opens up around Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:49:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a dream of someone in trouble in Lawrence.  Dean doesn't like the idea of psychic powers OR going back to their old house.  Dean discovers he likes Gun Shows.  Sam begins to open up to Dean.  Dean cuts more and more ties with his old life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Argument-interruptus

             Dean started to open his mouth to say something and snapped it shut.

            _Argument-interruptus_. It was annoying as shit. Every time they got into it (which the more time they spent on the road, the more they did) Sam would abruptly shrug and say, okay, ‘you’re right’ or ‘it doesn’t matter, there’s no right or wrong’. (Except of course there was.) But Sam wouldn’t separate his laundry.

            Sometimes he was so pissed it took everything in his power not to say something he knew he’d regret

 

*    *     *

 

            Sam was driving Dean batshit. He was pretty sure that he was doing the same thing to Sam. They were in the Impala, Dean was driving some winding nowhere highway on a gray afternoon while leaves scattered across the road, and they were arguing about laundry.

            “You’re supposed to separate,” Dean explained. “It’s right on the back of the laundry detergent. Cold water for colors, hot water for whites.”

            “Cold water for everything,” Sam said, slumped in his seat, knees squished hard against the dash. “Blood sets in hot water.”

            “Fine,” Dean said. “If you want your whites to be gray, cold water for everything, but you don’t just dump it all in one washing machine!”

            “Why the hell would I waste quarters on two washing machines?” Sam said. His voice was climbing in pitch. “What are you, some sort of suburban housewife?”

            “Because it’s the right way to take care of your clothes!” Dean could hear he was getting hot. “Jesus, Sam, you pack like someone is going to inspect your duffel! You fucking roll your t-shirts!” Sam did, he packed like Martha Stewart was going to come by and check to see if he did a good job.

            “Exactly! You waste money and then just throw your stuff in your bag!”

            “I don’t just throw my stuff in my bag, only my dirty clothes,” Dean wanted to glare at Sam but a big Dodge Ram pickup was coming towards them and the highway was narrow for him to take his eyes off the road. “Who the hell folds dirty clothes?”

            “They take up too much room if you just cram them in there.”

            “Oh, right, mister seven t-shirts to his name. You don’t own enough clothes to worry about them taking up too much room. And speaking of suburban housewives, who was the one watching some infomercial about the Pasta Express Cooker at 2:00am?” Dean hated trying to go to sleep with the television on. Dean would wake up to Sam watching the weirdest shit because Sam never slept. With the sound off. He’d throw a pillow at Sam. Sam would throw the pillow back at him and take another sip of bourbon.

            Dean glanced over at Sam, who was doing funny clenchy muscle things with his jaw. Back to the highway rising to a blind hill with probably another stop sign with little to no warning just over it. Then Sam said blandly. “Okay, you’re right, I should separate my laundry.”

            Dean started to open his mouth to say something and snapped it shut.

            _Argument-interruptus_. It was annoying as shit. Every time they got into it (which the more time they spent on the road, the more they did) Sam would abruptly shrug and say, okay, ‘you’re right’ or ‘it doesn’t matter, there’s no right or wrong’. (Except of course there was.) But Sam wouldn’t separate his laundry.

            Sometimes he was so pissed it took everything in his power not to say something he knew he’d regret.

           

            Dean decided this was another night he was going to find a bar. He’d been doing it a couple of evenings a week for the last several weeks; not for the alcohol so much as to have a little bit of time away. It wasn’t that he wanted to stop traveling with Sam, just that he needed a little away time.

            Sam had tried to get him to go back to his girlfriend after the thing in St. Louis where the dead skinwalker had been identified as Sam. “You can’t tell her I’m not dead,” Sam had pointed out. “What’s your excuse for driving around the country?”

            “What am I supposed to do,” Dean snapped, “go back to Colorado and grieve?”

            “You’ve got a life,” Sam had pleaded. “You don’t have a record. You can find another firefighting job.”

            “Nope,” Dean had said. What he couldn’t say was that he was born to be a hunter. That he knew it. He and Sam still trained when they could and Sam was still beating him when they sparred—but not by much. He could already out shoot Sam.

            So Dean had texted one last message to Roni. ‘I love you. I can’t come back to you. If I could explain I would but I’m not the person you and I thought I was.’ Then he’d destroyed the phone, crunched it under his boot heal.

            His old life was gone. Sam didn’t believe it, but it was. He felt bad about Roni. But everything else? It was amazing how little it mattered.

            Hunts were great. Sometimes living with Sam was a pain in the ass.


	2. I Have These Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a dream about something happening in their old house. He's afraid it is going to come true, that the people who are living their are in danger. 
> 
> Dean is less than thrilled.

           Sam wasn’t telling him that they were tracking John across the country, losing him, picking him back up, following coordinates John had sent to a hunt, tracking demon activity when they could. But Dean knew it. Knew from the hunts Sam picked and from the way Sam tracked things that could have been hunts successfully concluded. From the way Sam tracked certain kinds of things like weird weather. 

 *      *       * 

            Morning in another anonymous motel. Dean had started picking out motels with themes when he could find them, something, anything to make them stick in his mind. To make them not quite so anonymous. Amazing how even with themes they all swam together. Dean was clicking through Yahoo news, looking for a hunt. Sam had him doing it sometimes, a way to learn how to recognize signs. “All right. I’ve been cruising some websites,” Dean said. Sam was sitting on the bed, drawing something. Doodling. Weird. “I think I found a few candidates for our next gig. A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali –- its crew vanished.”

            Sam didn’t say anything. Not so weird. Sam could still go into asshole mode at the drop of a hat. Dean was learning not to take it personally. Okay, maybe he wasn’t but he was pretending not to take it personally.

            “And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas,” Dean said. “Hey.”

           Sam looked up.

           “Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?” Dean asked. Okay, maybe he was taking it personally.

           “No. I’m listening,” Sam looked back down at his doodle or whatever. “Keep going.” Sam curled his right hand all the way upside down when he wrote or drew. It was the most awkward way to hold a pen, ever. He’d done it from the time he was a kid.

           The next one was Dean’s favorite. “And, here, a Sacramento man shot himself in the head. Three times.” He expected some reaction. “Three times. In the head.” He waved his hand in front of Sam’s face. “Any of these things blowin’ up your skirt, pal?”

           “I’ve seen this,” Sam said, looking at his drawing.

           “Seen what?”

           Sam got up and went searching through his duffel bag.

           “What are you doing?”

           Sam pulled something out. A photo. A photo? Sam had photos? He slapped it down next to his drawing. Dean craned to see. The drawing was a freaking tree. The photo was of their parents. Their mom was holding Sammy the baby. Dean looked like a four year old doofus. The tree Sam had drawn was creepily like the tree in the photo except that the tree in the photo had leaves.

           “We have to go back to where our old house was,” Sam said.

           “Random,” Dean said.

            “Our old house didn’t completely burn down, right?”

            “I guess not,” Dean said.

            “Okay, the people who live in our old house –-they might be in danger.”

            “Might be in danger.”

           “Just trust me on this, okay?” Sam said.

           “Wait, whoa, whoa, trust you?” Dean said.   “Come on, man, that’s weak. You got to give me a little bit more than that.”

           Sam didn’t have an answer, just looked uncomfortable.

           “I’m not going anywhere until you do.”

           Sam sighed, “I have these nightmares.”

           “I’ve noticed,” Dean said because duh. Since Jessica died, Sam had trouble sleeping and watched infomercials and woke up with nightmares.

           “And sometimes…” Sam looked right at Dean, “they come true.”

           In their line of work, that was a big deal. Could mean that Sam was psychic. Dean had overheard Sam on a phone call to Sam’s friend Bobby Singer. Sam had said that their dad thought Sam was going to turn into something. That eventually their father would shoot him. Dean had thought it was evidence of how fractured the relationship was between Sam and their father was that Sam thought Dad would shoot him but if Sam was having dreams that came true and their father found out, he could see why Sam wouldn’t be happy.

           But going back to Lawrence. Fuck no.

           “Look,” Sam said. “I dreamt about Jessica’s death –- for days before it happened.”

           “People have weird dreams, man. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.” Dean suddenly felt like sitting down. It wasn’t that Sam never mentioned Jessica. It was just that he almost never mentioned Jessica.

           “No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn’t do anything about it because I didn’t believe it. And now I’m dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help. That’s where it all started. This has to mean something, right?”

           Dean wanted to tell Sam to shut the fuck up. That would have been wrong. “I don’t know,” he compromised.

           “This woman might be in danger. This might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica!”

           It felt like Sam was crowding him. “All right, just slow down, would you?” Dean stood up and for lack of anything else to do, started pacing. I mean, first you tell me that you’ve got the Shining? And then you tell me that I’ve got to go back home? Especially when…”

           “When what?” Sam asked.

           “When I swore to myself that I would never go back there?” Dean said. He knew what he sounded like. He sounded like he was pleading. But he already knew they had to do it.

#

           It was the beginning of a downhill slide, going back to Kansas. Dean knew that they were following John Winchester. Sam never said it, but what had happened to their mother had happened to Jess. Something had happened to Sam, too. Something that made their Dad tell Bobby…something. Dean didn’t tell Sam that he had overheard Sam talking to Bobby Singer on the phone, had heard him say that he was waiting to turn into something and have his father track him down and shoot him. He knew that Sam didn’t have any idea what he was supposed to turn into. He didn’t believe that his dad had told Bobby that. He was pretty sure Dad had said something that Sam had interpreted that way—maybe had Bobby research something about psychics if he suspected Sam was one.

           Sam wasn’t telling him that they were tracking John across the country, losing him, picking him back up, following coordinates John had sent to a hunt, tracking demon activity when they could. But Dean knew it. Knew from the hunts Sam picked and from the way Sam tracked things that could have been hunts successfully concluded. From the way Sam tracked certain kinds of things like weird weather.

           Sam had been tracking Dean’s life for years, through Facebook and God knew what other methods. Could recite Dean’s history like it was Bible verses.

           Dean was starting to put together a rough idea of Sam’s life and most of it was not great. Sam had started hunting when he was around fourteen, like Dean. John had used the memory of Dean as a goad to keep Sam on edge, to keep Sam training hard. (And fuck the old man for that. Sam only had to mention once that Dad was constantly comparing them and Sam had never measured up for Dean to want to punch his father.) Sam had gotten back by…by not eating. Sam had applied to college, gotten a _full ride at Stanford_ , but hadn’t enrolled although he had established some sort of half life in Palo Alto, acquiring friends, and even a girlfriend, Jessica. Jessica had helped him steady down, helped him learn to eat and Dean suspected helped him learn to connect with people, be a more normal kid. He’d been hunting solo, without Dad for several years now, although they still had some weird relationship. Then Dean ran into Sam in Greely, Colorado, and Jessica died the way mom did.


	3. The Knife & Gun Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam takes Dean to a Knife & Gun Show where Dean gets to experience a bit of America he had not experienced before. 
> 
> (Sam does things a bit differently than John Winchester.)

        "Sometimes Caleb is expensive.  Sometimes he doesn't have the things I want," Sam said.  "Sometimes he talks to much to John."  Lots of guys were hanging in the parking lot, talking by the trunks of cars and by vans. There were a lot of bushy, untrimmed beards and a lot of American flag decals. They walked towards the exhibition hall and passed a fair number of tractor caps. A guy standing by a van with a big American eagle painted on the side saw Sam’s t-shirt and grinned, cocked a thumb and forefinger like a gun as a salute and Sam gave a little comrade-in-arms wave. Everybody here was white. _Everybody._  

 *      *      * 

        The sky was Kansas blue on a chilly day. Dean turned into the fairgrounds and followed the signs for PARKING for the Coffee County Gun & Knife Show. Sam said they needed to check it out. At this time of year there were no fairs and most of the grounds were empty but one of the parking lots was full of pick-ups and vans and a lot of older model cars. There was an area set aside for motorcycles and it was full, too. A lot of motorcycles. A gang or two of motorcycles.

        The Gun & Knife show was another unexpected Sam thing. Their Dad never took them to a Gun & Knife Show. Never took them to a gun shop. They bought all their stuff from other hunters (no way they were they going to register and do some sort of mandatory wait period). Dean could see possibly faking the registration but how were they going to deal with a mandatory wait period here? Florida was three days, he didn’t even know what the wait period was in Kansas. Of course there probably wasn’t a mandatory wait period on a lot of the stuff they needed like machetes and handcuffs. Or maybe Sam just liked to look at shit.

        "What about Caleb?" Dean asked.

        Sam parked them at the end of a row, away from the other cars. Stepping out into the Kansas autumn, the wind tugged at Dean’s jacket.

        "What about Caleb?"  Sam popped the trunk and dug deep into the trunk.

        "Dad still buy from him?"

        "Yeah, I think."  Sam pulled off his jacket and striped, a flash of bare chest, goose bumps in November, and pulled on a t-shirt that said, _Gun control means being able to hit your target. - Michael_ _Badnarik_. Then he pulled his plaid shirt back on but left it hanging unbuttoned so the shirt was showing. “Who’s that?” Dean asked.

        “Libertarian presidential candidate in the last election,” Sam said as he slammed the trunk. “Do you watch the news?” Sam added a camo head cover, tying it in the back, and suddenly he was a tall skinny redneck, like someone you might see on a chopper. Dean wasn’t exactly a fan of rednecks.

        “I was mostly paying attention to the two guys who had a chance,” Dean said. Sam was a Libertarian? “I’m kind of surprised,” Dean said. “I had you pegged as more of a Nader guy.”

        That got a laugh out of Sam. “I wouldn’t have voted for Badnarik or Nader but if I wore a Nader t-shirt here I’d probably get shot. This,” he nodded his chin towards his chest, “is like wearing a suit to pretend to be an FBI agent.”

        “I’d have thought as long as your money was green they wouldn’t care what t-shirt you wore,” Dean said.

        “Depends on who and what you want to buy,” Sam said. He scanned the parking lot so Dean did again, too.

        "So why not buy from Caleb?  He doesn't care if you vote Libertarian."

        "Sometimes Caleb is expensive.  Sometimes he doesn't have the things I want," Sam said.  "Sometimes he talks too much to John."  Lots of guys were hanging in the parking lot, talking by the trunks of cars and by vans. There were a lot of bushy, untrimmed beards and a lot of American flag decals. They walked towards the exhibition hall and passed a fair number of tractor caps. A guy standing by a van with a big American eagle painted on the side saw Sam’s t-shirt and grinned, cocked a thumb and forefinger like a gun as a salute and Sam gave a little comrade-in-arms wave. Everybody here was white. _Everybody._

        Sam paid $8 a piece for them to get inside the exhibition hall. The middle-aged woman who took their money was wearing a big puffy coat. She had catseye glasses and an undershot a jaw like a bulldog. Dean thought he probably wouldn’t want to mess with her.

        The show was held in a big building full of rows and rows of tables spread with goods. There were banners that said ‘Certified Armor’ and ‘Sure Fire’. There were guns but also samari swords and t-shirts. The only women Dean saw were behind the tables and there weren’t many.

        Sam stopped at a table of boxes of ammo and kits to convert your semi-automatic into a full automatic. “What are you looking for?” the guy behind the table asked.

        “Just shopping,” Sam said. “My brother and me, we hunt and do a little target shooting.”

        “You looking for a kit?”

        Sam shook his head. “Not really interested in semi-automatics,” he said. “Looking for shotgun shells. I’ve got a .9mm just to plunk around with, my brother here prefers a .45.”

        The guy handed Sam a box of .45 caliber ammo. “Got a sale going on this stuff.”

        Sam shook his head again. “I haven’t had a lot of luck with Chinese stuff,” he said. “It jams too much, you know?”

        Guy nodded. “Yeah. It’s cheap though, if you’re just plinking.”

        They wandered the floor for awhile. Dean stopped to look at the Desert Eagles, the large caliber auto pistol in every fucking video game and movie. It was a monster of fire power. Shoot something with a DE and it stayed down. (Well, maybe not a wendigo but Dad had only hunted one of those in all the years recorded in his journal.  Dean figured he wasn't likely to hunt many in his life.) He looked up to see Sam giving him the eye. Okay, yeah, it was impossible to find ammo for them, they jammed, and it almost took a third hand to get a safety off. “It’s about the romance,” Dean said.

        Sam rolled his eyes but he was amused. Even in Sam-land, guns were fun.

        Sam bought a machete and a bullet mold and two hours later they were in the parking lot. It was okay. When isn’t a room full of guns fun? But it hadn’t seem worth the drive.

        Outside, they blinked in the afternoon daylight.

        “The parking lot is where we shop,” Sam murmured.

        That’s why the parking lot was so busy. That’s why two guys were looking in the trunk of a Malibu. And three other guys nodding over a hunting rifle.

        Sam nodded at a van. There was a guy sitting in a lawn chair. He looked like he was in his forties and he was another good old boy with an untrimmed beard and his hair combed straight back over his head. Despite the November chill he was just wearing a down vest. Sitting next to him, bundled in a pink coat, was a girl, maybe twelve, reading a book.

        “Hey,” Sam said to the guy.

        “Hello,” the guy said.

        “You Danny?” Sam said. “Jim from KS said to look for your van.”

        “Did he,” the guy said, not sounding too interested.

        The girl was reading a book about dragons. It was called _Dragonquest_ and had a someone riding a dragon on the cover. The girl had dark blond hair and looked like she was pretty used to spending her Saturday in a parking lot reading.

        “What are you looking for,” Danny asked.

        “A shotgun,” Sam said. Their shotguns tended to get beat to hell. They got dropped, often in cemeteries. They got thrown into things, often along with their owners.

        “What kind?”

        “Looking for a pistol grip, double barrel would be best.”

        Danny got up and pulled open the sliding door on the side of the van. Inside was a freaking gun store. “I’ve got a Winchester 1897 pump 12 gauge,” he said.

        Dean perked up. “That’s pretty sweet,” he said. And a Winchester. That meant something, right? He figured this was all really illegal but buying from another hunter was pretty illegal, too. This way they’d be long gone, in another state, using another name by the time any possible problems cropped up. Sam handed him a piece of paper with a list—shotgun, machete, ammo, bullet mold, silver.

        “Don’t worry about that,” he said quietly and pointed to the silver.

        The machete and bullet mold were crossed off.

        “You got an FFL?” Sam asked.

        Danny nodded. “Surprised you care.”

        Sam shrugged.

        Dean looked at Sam.

        “Federal Firearms License,” Sam explained. “Says he has a right to deal in this stuff.”

        “This here is just a private sale between friends, though,” Danny said. “None of that mandatory waiting period and shit. Less government involved the better, right?”

        Sam smiled. “Right. Good friends. Just making a deal. Like we were in our own home.” Dean suddenly got the t-shirt. Libertarian.  Less government.

        Danny nodded.

        “So inside there,” Dean said, gesturing towards the gun show.  “They have to register all them sales,” Danny said. “Inside there it’s like a regular brick and mortor store. Collecting sales tax, doing a shit ton of paperwork. Outside here, just a couple of guys, making a deal. All legal in the eyes of the law, though.” He might have talked like a hick but his eyes were smart. Dean looked back inside the van. Rifles. Guns. Boxes of stuff.

        “You have ammo?” Sam asked. “Everybody keeps trying to sell me that cheap Chinese shit.”

        “That crap jams like fuck,” Danny said. “When the shit hits the fan and the government sends it’s goons, I hope to hell they’ve been buying their ammo from the lowest bidder.”

        Sam grinned. “’Cause it’ll be Chinese, right?”

        Dean was pretty sure that Sam’s grin wasn’t reaching his eyes. On top of the boxes stacked behind the driver’s and passenger seat was a Barbie doll in a pink bathing suit, her legs stuck out straight so she was sitting.

        Danny still made Sam show him a driver’s license and he recorded everything on it. Dean knew that nothing on the driver’s license was real. They bought the shotgun, and some ammo and Sam paid cash.

        “Dad?” the girl said.

        “Yeah Keri?”

        “When are we going to get dinner?” She had blue gray eyes. She looked at Sam and he looked at her.

        “I’m almost done here, baby,” Danny said.

        Sam said, “I read those books. You like them?”

        She nodded.

        “Have you read the ones about the little dragons?” Sam asked.

        “The ones about the harpers? Not yet.”

        “They’re good, too,” Sam said. “But I didn’t like them as much as these.”

        Danny said, “Her mom don’t like any of them.”

        Sam said, “Because of the…” he glanced at the girl, “romance?” he finishes.

        “No, she doesn’t like the dragons,” the girl, Keri, said. “They’re Satanic.”

        Dean couldn’t help quirking an eyebrow.

        “She’s big into the church. It’s mostly good,” Danny said. He shrugged.

        “We used to be Catholic,” Keri said. “Grandma says now we’re nutcases.”

        “Your grandmother—” Danny said, his face twisting for a moment, and cut himself off. No love lost between son and mother-in-law, Dean thought.

        “Dad keeps my books in the van and I read them on the weekends,” Keri said. “Mom’s gotta work.”

        Awkward pause.

        “Got a suggestion where we should get some dinner?” Dean asked, to change the subject.

        “Cracker Barrel!” sang Keri.

        Danny laughed and his face was full of love for his daughter. “If you’re headed for Kansas City or Junction City, there are Cracker Barrels in both places,” he said.

        “I love Cracker Barrel,” Keri explained.

        “Do they have salads?” Dean asked. “My brother loves salads.”

        Keri’s head jerked to her dad; she didn’t seem to be sure about whether or not there was salad.

        “Keri gets French toast but they’ve got salad,” Danny said. “Their breakfast is their best thing.”

        “I think we might have to stop there, then,” Dean said.  The heartland. Where people will sell you a gun, spit on the government, and love their children.

 

        Cracker Barrel was the fakest place he has ever seen. They had to walk through a store full of junk before they could even get to the restaurant. Old Timey shit. Harmonicas and rocking chairs. “Kansas is a weird place,” Dean said.

        Sam was no longer pretending to be a Libertarian. The camo headrag was gone as was the crazy t-shirt. He was studying the menu like it was written in Babylonian. “How so?” he asked, not looking up.

        “That guy, the one we bought the shotgun from.”

        Sam looked up at him, “Yeah?”

        “Well, what did you think of him?”

        Sam looked at Dean for a moment and then back down to the menu. “He kinda reminded me of John.”

        Dean could feel his back rising. “That guy…he was all kinds of messed up. He sells guns, believes all that weird political horseshit…”

        Sam nodded. “Yeah. He’s obsessed about crazy stuff. Hauls his kid around.”

        The waitress, a high school student whose name tag read Ashley, showed up at that moment with coffee for Dean and water for Sam. Sam ordered two eggs over easy and a side salad which wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d ever ordered but was sliding toward it. (Sam went for protein and vegetables, avoided a lot of potatoes and bread.) Dean ordered something called the Country Boy breakfast which included grits, biscuits and sawmill gravy, steak, three eggs, hashbrown casserole, and fried apples. Sam regarded him with bemusement.

        “I can’t believe you think that guy was like Dad,” Dean said.

        “Well, not exactly like. The fact that his wife is still alive helps,” Sam said. “John is a lot crazier.”

        Dean blinked. Dad did believe in things that would sound crazy to most people. He and Sam did just happen to know that they’re true. Dad did haul them around the country. Dad did, in his own way, love them.

        “Huh,” Dean said.

        Sam pushed the little weird game to the middle of the table. It was this thing where you were supposed to jump golf tees over each other into holes, like checkers, until there was only one left. He jumped one and waited for Dean to jump the next.

        Dean had never been any good at these things. The only saving grace was, neither had Sam. Unless that was another thing that Sam had become good at in the years between.

        Dean was pleased to find it was not. They ended up with four pegs. Also, Cracker Barrel had apple cobbler with ice cream for dessert. Overkill, but hey, Sam made them run in the mornings.


	4. The Son You Threw Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where John threw Dean out when he was 14. Dean is a firefighter. Sam is a hunter. They're back in Lawrence.
> 
>  
> 
> “Pick up,” Sam said and it was the cold, hard voice that Dean had been hearing since Jess died. Whoever it was must not have picked up because Sam made an irritated noise. “It’s Sam. Listen, I know you don’t answer my messages but I’m in Lawrence with Dean. Your son, Dean. The good one, that you threw away, something you’ve regretted ever since, remember? The one that still defends your ass, God knows why. There’s something in our old house. I don’t know if it’s the thing that killed Mom or not but for once, old man, I’m asking for your help. So if you could get here.” Then Sam snapped the phone closed and stood there for a moment. He turned around and saw Dean.
> 
>  
> 
> He didn’t say anything, just walked back to the Impala and got in the passenger seat.

* * *

           Dean thought that he would instantly recognize the house in Lawrence but he could have passed it if he hadn’t had the address. For one thing, it was small. Just a pale clapboard two story. He had remembered it as so big.

           The trees were bigger, maybe that was what made the house look smaller. Also, he wasn’t four.

           “Are you going to be all right?” Sam asked.

           “Let me get back to you on that,” Dean said.

           He got out of the car and walked up the driveway. He waited for the memories to hit. For lightning to strike. It was just like the other hunts, right. ( _Right. In your dreams, Winchester._ ) He knocked on the door and a young woman answered—maybe his age? Pretty blond, dressed mom casual, and he went into the spiel, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but we’re with the Federal—”

           “I’m Sam Winchester,” Sam cut him off, “and this is my brother, Dean. We used to live here. You know, we were just driving by, and we were wondering if we could come see the old place.” What the? They weren’t ‘just driving by’ but it didn’t feel like Sam was making a play, that it was an angle. Sam felt weirdly sincere and…hopeful.

           The woman smiled. “Winchester,” she said, “Yeah, that’s so funny. You know, I think I found some of your photos the other night.”

           Dean could feel himself blink a couple of times. “You did?” There were no coincidences. Sam said that. _Dad said that_.

           The woman stepped aside and opened the door. “Come on in.”

           Sam looked at him with a look that was full of meaning but Dean didn’t know what the meaning was. He followed Sam in.

           The living room was just a living room and rang no memory bells but the kitchen…he could sort of remember the kitchen. The dark cabinets must have survived the fire or been replaced with something similar. The white stove. There was a young girl doing homework at a kitchen table (their table had been different, he could remember the table legs.) There was a boy in a playpen.

           The boy was bouncing saying, “Juice! Juice! Juice! Juice!”

           The woman said, “That’s Ritchie. He’s kind of a juice junkie.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a sippy cup. The refrigerator had to be newer. She handed the sippy cup to the toddler. “But, hey, at least he won’t get scurvy.” Then she went to the girl. “Sari, this is Sam and Dean. They used to live here.”

           The girl had that, I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-supposed-to-do-with-that-info-but-I’ve-been-trained-to-be-polite look. “Hi.”

           Dean made a little wave.

           “Hey, Sari,” Sam said.

           “So, you just moved in?” Dean said to the pretty mom.

           “Yeah, from Wichita.”

           “You got family here, or….?”

           “No. I just, uh….needed a fresh start, that’s all,” she said, all smiley and a little nervous. Divorce? Single mom? Widow? “So, new town, new job –- I mean, as soon as I find one. New house.”

           “So, how you liking it so far?” Sam asked, voice soft.

           “Well, uh, all due respect to your childhood home –- I mean, I’m sure you had lots of happy memories here.” Dean listened to her try to be polite and tried to smile back. He had nightmares here. “But this place has its issues,” she finished, awkwardly.

           “What do you mean?” Sam didn’t exactly pounce, his voice was too kind.

           “Well, it’s just getting old,” she said. “Like the wiring, you know? We’ve got flickering lights almost hourly.”

           Wow, they didn’t even have to ask. And almost hourly. Although the place was pretty old. (He was lying to himself, he knew.)

           “Oh, that’s too bad. What else?” His smile felt faker than fake.

           “Um…sink’s backed up, there’s rats in the basement.” He could see her feel embarrassment. He knew that his face, his plastered on smile, wasn’t helping. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to complain.”

           “No.” He wanted her to keep talking. “Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?”

           “It’s just the scratching, actually.” She felt weird complaining even with encouragement. Nice lady.

           “Mom,” the little girl said. What was she, ten? Her mother knelt down next to her. “Ask them if it was here when they lived here.”

           The woman was going to say something polite, some, ‘oh Sari’ thing, but Sam got there first, asking gently, “What, Sari?”

           “The thing in my closet,” the little girl said.

           “Oh, no, baby, there was nothing in their closets.” Her hand was on her daughter’s hair and her face gave them no option. “Right?” she asked them.

           “Right,” Sam said. “No, no, of course not.”

           It wasn’t in the closet. It was in the room. Killing my mother, Dean thought.

           “She had a nightmare the other night,” Sari’s mother explained.

           “I wasn’t dreaming. It came into my bedroom –- and it was on fire.”

           Oh God.

           Dean could barely listen as Sam thanked them for letting Dean and him see the house. He wasn’t remembering, he was just…just…

           Outside, walking back to the car, Sam was lit up. No Terminator Sam today. “You hear that? A figure on fire,” he said.

           “And that woman, Jenny, that was the woman in your dreams?” Dean asked. He was trying to put it all together.

           “Yeah,” Sam said, bulldozing over that shiny little fact like it was nothing. Like psychic dreams were no big deal. “And you hear what she was talking about? Scratching, flickering lights, both signs of a malevolent spirit.”

           “Yeah, well, I’m just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true.”

           “You can shoot me with a silver bullet later!” Sam said, his voice high and young. “The thing in the house, do you think it’s the thing that killed Mom and Jessica?”

           “I don’t know!” Shoot him with a silver bullet? Come on! There was something between ignoring it and Defcon 11.

           “Has it come back or has it been here the whole time?” Sam asked.

           “Or maybe it’s something else entirely, Sam, we don’t know yet. You’re supposed to be the expert, remember?”

           “Well, those people are in danger,” Sam said, waving an arm back to the suburban house, the suburban street. People were going to think they were lunatics. Sam was out of control. “We have to get them out of that house.”

           Nice to know that Sam was human but really, this wasn’t the moment to find out that he could freak out just like anyone else. “And we will.” He walked to the Impala.

           “No,” Sam said, arms out, stomping after him. “I mean now!”

           Dean whirled around. “And how you gonna do that, huh? You got a story that she’s gonna believe?”

           “Then what are we supposed to do?”

           “Get in the car, Sammy.”

           “It’s fucking Sam,” his brother said. He threw himself into the passenger seat.

           “We need gas,” Dean said.

           The Impala didn’t use gas, she drank it. Twelve miles in the city, eighteen miles per gallon on the highway. While Dean pumped, Sam loomed over the passenger side roof. Dean asked, “You know, if this was any other kind of job, what would we do?”

                      Sam sighed. “We’d try to figure out what we were dealing with. We’d dig into the history of the house.”

           Dean thought he should have been amused that this time he was lecturing Sam. But he was too weirded out. “Exactly, except this time, we already know what happened.”

           “Yeah, but how much do we know?” Sam asked. “I mean, how much do you actually remember?”

           “About that night, you mean?” Dean asked. He knew what Sam meant but he didn’t want to.

           “Yeah.”

           What did he remember. He was four. Light. Flickering. Beautiful and wrong. “Not much,” he said. “I remember the fire…” the way it was dry and too hot from the nursery on his face, “the heat.” He thinks maybe he remembers more. His father. Something his father didn’t want him to see or know. His father giving him the bundle, the baby. “And then I carried you out the front door.”

           “You did?” Sam said.

           “Yeah,” Dean said. It was such a central part of the story he was surprised by Sam’s question. “What, you never knew that?”

           Sam shook his head. “No.”

           “And,” Dean mentally shook himself out of the memory, “well, you know Dad’s story as well as I do. Mom was….was on the ceiling. And whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her.”

           “He never had a theory about what did it?” Sam asked.

           “If he did, he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times.”

           “Okay. So, if we’re gonna figure out what’s going on now…we have to figure out what happened back then. And see if it’s the same thing.” Sam was intense, interested, but not…it didn’t mattered to him in a different way. Sam had no memories of it.

           “Yeah.” Dean thought. “We’ll talk to Dad’s friends, neighbors, people who were there at the time.”

           Dean realized that the Impala’s tank was full and he was looking at a busy street, not seeing it. People would probably like it if he cleared the pump, let other cars use it. Sam was still standing there, too.

           What Sam said next surprised him. “Does this feel like just another job to you?”

            Dean looked at him.

            “Fuck,” Sam said and something shut down on his face. He walked off around the corner. It was startlingly abrupt. Unexpected. Sam had been so…not like that for days. Dean waited a moment and then followed him.

            Sam had his cell phone out and his back to the lot, to Dean, to everything. “Pick up,” Sam said and it was the cold, hard voice that Dean had been hearing since Jess died. Whoever it was must not have picked up because Sam made an irritated noise. “It’s Sam. Listen, I know you don’t answer my messages but I’m in Lawrence with Dean. _Your son, Dean_. The good one, that you threw away, something you’ve regretted ever since, remember? The one that still defends your ass, God knows why. There’s something in our old house. I don’t know if it’s the thing that killed Mom or not but for once, old man, I’m asking for your help. So if you could get here.” Then Sam snapped the phone closed and stood there for a moment. He turned around and saw Dean.

            He didn’t say anything, just walked back to the Impala and got in the passenger seat.

 


	5. Went to Missouri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dude,” Dean said.
> 
> “What,” Sam said, irritable.
> 
> “You’re acting like you’re thirteen.”
> 
> Sam couldn’t meet his eyes. “Fuck off,” he said.
> 
> “And you need a haircut. How can you even see past all that stuff.”
> 
> Sam kicked his foot under the table.
> 
> Dean kicked back.
> 
> Sam kicked again.
> 
> This started something a little like foot foosball until they almost upset the table and upset Sam’s coffee. They both steadied the table. Sam straightened up and tucked his hair behind his ears and cleared his throat.

*    *    * 

           They did the thing, pretending to be law enforcement, interviewing people. John Winchester had partnered with Larry Guenther after he got back from Vietnam and they had opened up a garage. Now it was just Guenther’s Auto Repair but Larry Guenther was happy to talk about John. Guenther called him a stubborn bastard but not in a way that made Dean think Guenther thought ill of him. He had nothing but praise for John’s devotion to family. Dean couldn’t help but steal a look at Sam out of the corner of his eye but Sam’s face was attentive, professional.

            Guenther also described John’s idea that something killed his wife and his growing obsession with psychics.

            They got in the Impala.

            “I gotta eat,” Dean said.

            “Okay,” Sam said. “Drive thru?”

            Dean shook his head. “No, eat, eat.”

            Sam grimaced. “Okay,” he said. He didn’t want to, clearly. Didn’t want to stop. Dean found them a place called the Ladybird Diner. It wasn’t really a diner, it was more like a kind of hipster lunch spot with a counter and tables and young people with tattoos working. It had an exposed brick wall and the curtains were made out of aprons. But it had food. Sam only got coffee.

            “You sure that’s all you’re going to get?” Dean said, knowing it was a mistake as soon as he said it.

            “I don’t need you telling me when to eat,” Sam snapped.

            “Fine, live on power bars. What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway?”

            “Wrong with me?” Sam said. “What do you mean, wrong with me?”

            The waitress, who had dyed black hair and hipster-nerd glasses looked over at them.

            “You’re Mr. Control, okay?” Dean consciously lowered his voice. “When that wendigo hung you up underground, you were less concerned than the average Taco Bell employee. Which in my experience is hard because those kids just don’t care. But now you’re all, like, emotions.”

            Sam slumped in his seat, arms crossed. “I am not,” he said. Sullen.

            Dean tried, really tried. He had been pissed but Jesus, it was so unexpected. Sam kept his hair tucked behind his ears but some of it had come untucked and had fallen over one eye. His chin was against his chest. Maybe underneath all that damage and bad-assery there really was a twenty-two year old guy.

            “Dude,” Dean said.

            “What,” Sam said, irritable.

            “You’re acting like you’re thirteen.”

            Sam couldn’t meet his eyes. “Fuck off,” he said.

            “And you need a haircut. How can you even see past all that stuff.”

            Sam _kicked his foot_ under the table.

            Dean kicked back.

            Sam kicked again.

            This started something a little like foot foosball until they almost upset the table and upset Sam’s coffee. They both steadied the table. Sam straightened up and tucked his hair behind his ears and cleared his throat. The waitress came over and Sam wilted under her glare.

            “Sorry,” he said. “Really. Can I add a side salad to the order?”

            She nodded, tight lipped, and mopped up the table.

            “Okay, Mr. Maturity,” Dean said, “So what gives?”

            “I don’t know,” Sam said. “It’s our house, I guess. Our chance.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Don’t you want to find out?” Sam said. When Dean didn’t know what he was talking about. “What happened. To straighten out what screwed up our lives. If this is it, we could maybe even end it. Then you could, you know…”

            Sam was looking at him as if it was all obvious.

            “Could what? Start a scrap book of awesome things we’ve done?”

            “No! Go get another job as a fireman or something. Go back to doing sane things! Have a life where someone paid you to be a hero instead of living the way we do.”

            Dean didn’t know how to tell his brother that the ship had sailed. “You, too,” he said.

            Sam hesitated. “Yeah,” he said.

            Dean felt the words rising in him. He wanted to just grab Sam and shake him. _You’re not doomed, it’s not too late, you want a life, take it!_ But then the glowering waitress dropped off his buttermilk chicken sandwich with jalapenos and Sam’s side salad and he thought, don’t push it or the asshole won’t eat his stupid lettuce. Instead he didn’t watch while Sam picked all the croutons out of the salad.

           After lunch they drove until they found a payphone that still had a phonebook attached to it. It was hard enough to find a payphone. Even harder to find one where the phonebook hadn’t been vandalized. Sam leaned against the Impala with his arms crossed, studying his boots, while Dean leafed through.

            “All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There’s someone named El Divino. There’s, uh,” Dean lowered his voice, “there’s the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky.” He glanced up, Sam smiled a little without bothering to look up from his boots. Dean went back to reading “Uh, Missouri Moseley—”

            “Wait. Missouri Moseley?” Sam interrupted.

           “What?”

           “That’s a psychic?” Sam said.

           “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it says so here,” Dean said. “No add though. Fortinsky has an add with a crystal ball.”

           Sam reached into the backseat and pulled out their father’s hunting journal. “In John’s journal…here, look at this.” He opened the journal and handed it to Dean. “First page, first sentence, read that.”

           The sentence read, _I went to Missouri and I learned the truth._

           Sam said, “I always thought he meant the state.”

            

           Missouri’s house was another two story. The front room was a cross between a regular living room and a waiting room. The walls were warmly painted, there were dark wood moldings. They sat down on a couch. Sam sat up, his back not touching the back of the couch. Dean felt weird sitting in someone’s house that was also their place of business. Wouldn’t it be weird having people come into your house with your whole life just hanging out for them to see if they just decided to climb up your steps and snoop around—

           “All right, there. Don’t you worry about a thing. Your wife is crazy about you,” a middle-aged woman escorted a man to the door. She came up to about his shoulder but she dominated him and the whole room.

           The man mumbled his thanks. The woman pushed the door shut and left her hand against it a moment. “Whew. Poor bastard,” she said. “His woman is cold-banging the gardener.”

           Dean was so startled he blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell him?”

           “People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news.”

           Dean was pleased to see that Sam was just as caught off guard as he was. Nice to see something could surprise Sam.

           “Well?” Missouri said—Dean was pretty sure she was Missouri because who else could she be, “Sam and Dean, come on already, I ain’t got all day.” She walked past them and into the next room. He looked at Sam and Sam looked at him and what else was there to do but stand up and follow her? Cause somehow she knew their names.

           She turned around and smiled up at both of them. “Well, let me look at you.” She laughed with sheer pleasure. “Oh, you boys grew up handsome.” Sam was starting to smile. Then she pointed a finger at Dean. “And you were one goofy-looking kid, too.” That really made Sam smirk. She turned her eyes on Sam and Dean waited for revenge but instead her face softened and she just said, “Sam,” and grabbed his hand. “Oh, honey…I’m sorry about your girlfriend.” Dean thought at that moment he’d rather be told he was goofy looking. She went on. “And your father –- he’s missing?”

           “How’d you know all that?” Sam asked.

           “Well, you were just thinking it just now,” Missouri said, as if it was obvious. Sam didn’t look like he thought it was so obvious.

           “Where is he?” Dean said. “Is he okay?”

           “I don’t know,” Missouri said.

           “Don’t know?,” Dean snapped. “Well, you’re supposed to be a psychic, right?”

           “Boy,” Missouri said, and it was like having your mom tell you that was backtalk, “you see me sawing some bony tramp in half? You think I’m a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can’t just pull facts out of thin air. Sit, please.”

           Sam smiled a little.

           Dean felt irritated and sunk way down into the love seat.

           Missouri gave him the eye and said, “Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, I’m ‘a whack you with a spoon!”

           “I didn’t do anything!” Dean said, hearing how defensive he sounded.

           “But you were thinking about it.”

           All right, he was. And Sam was being way too entertained by this whole thing.

           Apparently, Sam had the sense to get real about this whole situation. “Okay,” he said. “So, our dad—when did you first meet him?”

           “He came for a reading. A few days after the fire,” Missouri said. “I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say…I drew back the curtains for him.”

           The fire. The heat on his front and face, the cool normal air of the hallway behind him. Dean leaned forward. “What about the fire? Do you know about what killed our mom?”

           Missouri was hesitant. “A little. Your daddy took me to your house. He was hoping I could sense the echoes, the fingerprints of this thing.”

           “And could you?” Sam asked

           “I….” Missouri shook her head, although whether she couldn’t say or couldn’t bring herself to say—

           “What was it?” Sam was not in interrogation mode, he was just a kid, wanting to know what happened to his family. To him.

           “I don’t know,” Missouri said softly. “Oh, but it was evil.”


	6. A Force of Nature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jenny let them in, Missouri moved through it as if she had been in it a week ago, not twenty-one years ago, asking Jenny to wait downstairs and leading Sam and Dean upstairs and into Sari’s bedroom. It still had the feeling of being half moved into, not yet converted completely into a little girl’s bedroom.
> 
> “If there’s a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it,” she said. ‘Dark energy.’ Sam never talked that way. His dad had never talked that way. It felt all weird and hocus pocus.
> 
> “This used to be your nursery,” Missouri said to Sam. “This is where it all happened.”
> 
> Dean glanced out into the hall. He would have sworn he’d have known which room was the nursery. Sam looked up at the ceiling.

          It wasn’t an answer, not really, but it was all Missouri Moseley could tell them. Sam told her about his dream and about the people in their house. Maybe the reason he was so open with her was the knowledge that she could read his thoughts, that there was no reason to pretend to be anything other than some guy who wanted to know something.

          Missouri had been watching the house, she told them. Keeping an eye on it. A psychic neighborhood watch, Dean thought. It had been quiet. No deaths, no freak accidents, no weirdness.  Sam listened, serious.

          Dean realized that Missouri wasn’t telling him that he wasn’t right, she was looking to Sam for an explanation. She was treating him like some sort of weird psychic expert. He wasn’t sure if Sam realized it. “It just feels like something’s starting,” Sam said.

          “That’s a comforting thought,” Dean said.

            They went back to the old house and knocked again.  Jenny, the young mom, answered the door with the juice monster on her arm. Ritchie was happy and fine but Jenny seemed stretched around the edges. She looked at Sam and Dean the way people looked when Mormon missionaries knocked on their door. She smiled a kind of tight smile.

          Sam introduced Missouri as an old friend and Dean added, “If it’s not too much trouble, we were hoping to show her the old house. You know, for old time’s sake.”

          Jenny was halfway to shutting the door. “You know, this isn’t a good time. I’m kind of busy.”

          Sam was looming over from in back of him, all pent up tension. It was everything Dean could do to keep himself from sticking his foot out to keep her from closing that door. “Listen, Jenny, it’s important.” He didn’t expect Missouri to smack him in the back of the head. “Ow!” He raised his hand to the back of his head and looked back at her.

          Missouri was oblivious to his pain. “Give the poor girl a break, can’t you see she’s upset?” She turned to Jenny, “Forgive this boy, he means well, he’s just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but hear me out.”  Not fair, Dean thought. Not fair at all.

          “About this house, girl,” Missouri said.

          “What are you talking about?” Jenny asked, brave and normal and all denial, the way civilians were. Missouri was going about it all wrong, Dean thought.

          But Missouri’s voice was gentle but implacable. “I think you know what I’m talking about. You think there’s something in this house, something that wants to hurt your family. Am I mistaken?”

          “Who are you?” Jenny blustered a little.

          “We’re people who can help, who can stop this thing,” Missouri promised. “But you’re gonna have to trust us, just a little.  It turned out Missouri Mosley was a force of nature.

          When Jenny let them in, Missouri moved through it as if she had been in it a week ago, not twenty-one years ago, asking Jenny to wait downstairs and leading Sam and Dean upstairs and into Sari’s bedroom. It still had the feeling of being half moved into, not yet converted completely into a little girl’s bedroom.

          “If there’s a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it,” she said. ‘Dark energy.’ Sam never talked that way. His dad had never talked that way. It felt all weird and hocus pocus.

          “This used to be your nursery,” Missouri said to Sam. “This is where it all happened.”

          Dean glanced out into the hall. He would have sworn he’d have known which room was the nursery. Sam looked up at the ceiling. Missouri moved around the room. Dean searched his pockets and found the old EMF meter.

          “That an EMF?” Missouri asked.

          “Yeah,” Dean said.

          “Amateur,” Missouri said. Now she was just trying to get him. The EMF was lit up and beeping like a mofo. He showed it to Sam who nodded, impressed.

          Missouri looked thoughtful. “I don’t know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain’t the thing that took your mom.”

          “Wait, are you sure?” Sam asked.

          Missouri nodded.

          “How do you know?”

          “It isn’t the same energy I felt the last time I was here,” she said. “It’s something different.”

          Dean felt disappointed. A little. “What is it?”

          Missouri opened the closet. When they rebuilt after the fire, they had put in a nice big closet but it felt a little weird to be looking in a little girl’s closet. At least without the risk of something being on fire. “There’s more than one spirit in this place,” she said. Sam looked at Dean. He had a ‘that’s weird’ look. Apparently spirits didn’t hang around each other. “They’re here because of what happened to your family,” Missouri continued. “You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected.”

          “I don’t understand,” Sam said. He seemed completely off his game, looking at the house and the room like a tourist, not like he wanted to kill something here.

          “This place is a magnet for paranormal energy,” she explained. “It’s attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one. And it won’t rest until Jenny and her babies are dead.”

          “You said there was more than one spirit,” Sam prompted.

          “There is. I just can’t quite make out the second one.”

          Dean remembered that poltergeists were way high on the ‘Sucks Bad’ list of things that go bump in the night. If Sam was going to check out to nostalgia-land, someone was going to have to stay frosty. “One thing’s for damn sure –- nobody’s dying in this house ever again,” Dean said. “So whatever is here, how do we stop it?”

          Stopping it meant making up bags of herbs, hex bags to drive the thing out of the house. They promised Jenny they’d be back and went back to Missouri’s where they all settled at the table for a round of arts and crafts. Stuffing little black bags with herbs and weird shit.

          Then they loaded up and headed out for the old house.

          “Sam,” Dean said. “Be careful, man.”

          “You, too,” Sam said, as if everything were normal. As if Sam was like he always was instead of somehow off his game.

          

            It was weird to be doing so much in the daylight. It was weird to have Jenny meeting them at the door, all packed up, kids ready, worried for them.

            “Look,” Jenny said. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable leaving you guys here alone.”

          “Just take your kids to the movies or something, and it’ll be over by the time you get back.” Dean wasn’t sure how Missouri did that, be all soothing and commanding at once. But Jenny went, looking back at them, unsure.

          Dean took the kitchen tapping a hole in the wall with the tip of an ax blade. Not the size ax he was used to for fire fighting. When they took down a wall they really weren’t so worried about damage, they were worried about hotspots and they wanted a look behind all the drywall. But now he wanted to leave things easy for Jenny to patch up.

          Behind him he heard something, a rattle, a rasp of wood against wood. He ducked.

          He heard the solid thunk of a knife burying itself in the cabinet. Holy shit. He lunged and pulled the little kitchen table towards him, upending it. It was like something out of a carnival—a bunch of knives suddenly imbedded themselves in the table.

          Upstairs something solid hit the floor. Something Sam-sized. He was up, pushing the hex bag through the hole he’d made in the drywall and then taking the stairs two at a time.

          Sam was on his back in the bedroom with blue flowered wallpaper, a lamp cord wrapped around his neck and his hands had already gone lax. Dean barely heard himself yelling, “SAM?”

          He tried to get his fingers underneath the cord. He tried to unwrap it. The cord wasn’t a cord anymore, it was a solid thing wrapped around Sam’s neck. Think, Winchester. Sam had a total of seven minutes without air and Dean didn’t know if Missouri had gotten her bag in the basement wall. Dean grabbed the hex bag off the floor kicked a hole in the drywall. He stuffed the bag in the wall.

          Before he could decide if he had to run for the basement the room filled with white and blinding light. Just as quickly it was gone.

          Dean heard Sam wheeze. A horrible, wonderful sound. It was never good when you could hear someone breathing that way, but so much better than not breathing. He pulled his brother up from the floor and unwound the cord from his neck. Sam was semi-conscious, slack in his hands, wheezing and gasping and not quite conscious.

          Dean pulled him tight into a hug. His brother. His Sammy. “Sammy,” he said. “Breath for me, come on, Sammy, breath.”

          His brother didn’t fight back. Dean could feel Sam’s forehead on his shoulder. After a moment, Sam’s arms came up around him.

 


	7. You Sure This is Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me again, what are we still doing here?” Dean asked.
> 
> “I just…” Sam studied the empty street, “I still have a bad feeling.”
> 
> “Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, it should be over.”
> 
> “Yeah, well, probably.”
> 
> Probably? What the hell, probably?
> 
> “But I just want to make sure, that’s all,” Sam said.
> 
> Dean wanted to say, is it the psychic thing? Cause if it was the psychic thing he wanted Sam to just tell him and stop acting so weird but at the same time he really didn’t know how he felt about the way Sam was acting. It was great to have his brother have dropped his guard so much. To be talking to Dean so much. But on the other hand, he was not so sure that there wasn’t going to be a price. Psychic shit. He didn’t like psychic shit.

           The kitchen was a mess. The spirit had pulled out everything in the fridge. Stuff was all over the floor. Anything breakable that had been out on the counter was broken. They had put hex bags in the walls of all the rooms, even though the spirit seemed to be gone. Missouri was lost in thought. Sam still had faint red ligature marks around his neck although he wasn’t paying any attention. He seemed antsy.

           Dean felt bad for Jenny. She’d need a new kitchen table, a lot of groceries, a new lamp… It was pretty clear money was tight.

           Sam frowned. “You sure this is over?” he said to Missouri.

           “I’m sure. Why?” Missouri turned and looked at him. “Why do you ask?” She searched his face. Looking Dean thought, for something.

           Whatever she was looking for, Sam didn’t seem to want to give it. “Never mind.” He sighed. “It’s nothin’, I guess.”

           Dean wanted to ask if it was the psychic shit but he also didn’t.

           The front door opened and Jenny called cheerfully, “Hello? We’re home.” She had Ritchie the juice monster on one hip and was holding Sari’s hand. Her stopped smiling when she saw the kitchen. “What happened?”

           “Hi, sorry,” Sam said, still distracted. “Um, we’ll pay for all of this.”

           Pay with what, Dean thought. They barely had money for gas and laundry.

           Missouri said firmly, “Don’t you worry. Dean’s going to clean up this mess.”

           Really? When had it become pick on Dean day?

           “Well,” Missouri turned to Dean, “What are you waiting for, boy? Get the mop.”

           Jesus fucking Christ, he thought, heading to the closet to find a broom.

           “And don’t cuss at me!” Missouri called after him.

           “Then stay out of my thoughts,” Dean muttered under his breath. “A man should be allowed the sanctity of his own head.”

            

           Dean actually did like Missouri. He liked her whole dishing him shit shtick. He liked how tough she was. The psychic thing was creepy. But he believed her when she said the place was empty of spirits.

           Then Sam wanted to go back and do surveillance. Because Sam didn’t sleep and didn’t really care about eating or sitting, parked in the Impala half the night when they could be at a hotel watching HBO. Mostly because Sam was being weird and emo about this whole hunt. “Tell me again, what are we still doing here?” Dean asked.

           “I just…” Sam studied the empty street, “I still have a bad feeling.”

           “Why? Missouri did her whole Zelda Rubenstein thing, the house should be clean, it should be over.”

           “Yeah, well, probably.”

           Probably? What the hell, probably?

           “But I just want to make sure, that’s all,” Sam said.

           Dean wanted to say, is it the psychic thing? Cause if it was the psychic thing he wanted Sam to just tell him and stop acting so weird but at the same time he really didn’t know how he felt about the way Sam was acting. It was great to have his brother have dropped his guard so much. To be talking to Dean so much. But on the other hand, he was not so sure that there wasn’t going to be a price. Psychic shit. He didn’t like psychic shit.

           “Yeah, well,” he said, “problem is I could be sleeping in a bed right now.” Maybe they’d just sit in the car for a couple of hours and then it would be over. He slid down in the seat and closed his eyes.

           Sam said, “Dean. Look, Dean!”

           Dean jerked up. Jenny was in the bedroom window, fists beating on the glass, screaming soundlessly.

           “You grab the kids, I’ll get Jenny!” Dean yelled, sprinting towards the front door.

           Inside, Dean followed Sam up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He could hear Jenny now, rattling the doorknob, yelling.

           “Jenny!” he yelled.

           “I can’t open the door!” she called from inside the bedroom.

           “Stand back!” he said and brought his foot up and kicked the door hard at the lock plate. “Come on,” he said, grabbing her.

           “No, my kids!” she said.

           “Sam’s got your kids,” he said, “come on!”

           She did what he told her and ran, thank God. It was not the time to second guess. Sam was a big guy. Sam could carry those kids easily. Down the stairs, outside to the lawn.

           Interminable seconds ticking by. Dean found himself counting. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four one-thousand. Come on Sam, where the hell was he. Then there was Sari running out, holding her little brother’s hand—

           —but no Sam.

           Jenny scooped up Ritchie and Dean went to one knee and asked, “Sari, where’s Sam?

           Sari was crying. “He’s inside. Something’s got him.”

           He looked at the door, looking for flames, but the door slammed shut. Sam inside. This time he’d left Sam inside.

           He had to get inside. An ax, a weapon. He ran for the Impala and opened the trunk, flipped open the compartment. His hands knew where the shotguns were, where the shotgun shells loaded with salt were. He grabbed an ax. He ran back across the lawn, booking, not worrying about how stupid it was to run with a goddamn ax. He slammed the ax into the door. Solid core door, good fire door, fuck fuck fuck if there was ever a time he didn’t want something to code.

           He realized he had chopped a panel out of the top of the door and he could see his brother pinned against the wall. He needed to get in. _Think Winchester, get in. Don’t just slam at the door with the ax._ He spintered out the bottom of the door.

           A figure of flame was walking towards Sam who watched it with the strangest expression.

           “Sam?” Dean yelled. “Sam!” He put himself between the creature of fire and Sam who was clearly pinned by some force. He raised the shotgun—

           “No, don’t! Don’t!” Sam said.

           “What, why?!”

           And Sam’s voice went soft, “Because I know who it is. I can see her now.” Dean looked back. See _her_? See who? The flames wreathed the figure, and then they wisped and died and it was his mother. Wearing a nightdown trimmed in white lace, her hair streaming around her and then settling on her shoulders. She looked young, the age she would have been the night she died. His mom.

           His mom.

           He lowered the shotgun.

           “Mom?” he asked softly. Not sure, not really believing.

           She smiled and took a step towards him. “Dean,” she said. It was Mom. He didn't even know what that meant. He didn't know how to feel. He wasn't breathing. She was only a couple of years older than he was and how could that be? How could she be that young? She took a few careful steps around him, watching him, as if she couldn’t bear to take her eyes off him and then finally she looked at Sam.

           It occurred to Dean that Sam didn’t remember her, knew her only from pictures. Sammy tried to smile but his eyes were tearing up. Mom’s smile faded.

           “I’m sorry,” she said, so clearly.

           Sam said what Dean was thinking. “For what?” He whispered. He was still pinned against the door.

           Dean wondered if she was going to reach out, try to touch Sam or him and he wanted it but… She didn’t, she didn’t answer the question, either, she walked away from them, back to the middle of the room and looked up at the ceiling.

           “You get out of my house,” she said, her voice like steel. “And let go of my son.” She burst into flame and when she was entirely engulfed, the fire roared upwards to the ceiling, poured like a current of fire across it and disappeared.

           Sam made a noise, an indrawn breath when he was released and Dean looked back at him.

           “Mom,” Dean said, the word just slipping out.

           He looked over at his brother, trying to grasp what had just happened.

           Sam’s eyes were wet but all he said was, “ _Now_ it’s over.”

 


	8. A Million Miles Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean had watched the local fire guys go through the house knowing they’d find no sign of fire, knowing they’d be rolling their eyes at each other. He heard the captain telling Jenny that even though they hadn’t found any evidence of a fire she’d done the right thing and if she smelled smoke again she should call them.
> 
> He’d felt a million miles away. He couldn’t imagine himself being a firefighter again.

*   *   *

            Jenny had photos she’d found in the attic in a box and she was happy to turn them over to Dean. He looked through some of them—him holding Sam when Sam was a baby, pictures of his dad, shiny photos with broad white borders.

            Sam sat on the steps of the house talking quietly with Missouri.

            They hadn’t talk about whatever Sam had felt or known. About the psychic shit and Sam’s belief that John Winchester was going to maybe hunt him down and shoot him. They hadn’t talked about anything, just waited until the police and the fire department got there and Jenny told them she’d smelled smoke and couldn’t get the door open and that Sam and Dean had heard her calling and broken down the door to help.

            Dean had watched the local fire guys go through the house knowing they’d find no sign of fire, knowing they’d be rolling their eyes at each other. He heard the captain telling Jenny that even though they hadn’t found any evidence of a fire she’d done the right thing and if she smelled smoke again she should call them.

            He’d felt a million miles away. He couldn’t imagine himself being a firefighter again.

            He put the box of photos in the trunk of the car and waited while Sam finished talking to Missouri. It was nice and suburban and normal seeming. They waved and made noises about seeing each other again. He never planned on being in Lawrence, Kansas again.

            Sam got into the passenger seat and Dean started up the Impala and they headed out.

            “What next?” Dean asked.

            “I dunno,” Sam said, watching out the passenger window.

            “Just drive awhile, find a motel, look for a case?”

            Sam nodded.

            “No intuition? No dreams?”

            “Fuck off, Dean.”

            “You’re the one who knew something was there,” Dean said.

            Sam shrugged.

            “Missouri didn’t even know.”

            “Yeah, well, maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Sam said.

            “Why?” Dean said.

            “Because I keep expecting to see John and he’s not here.”

            “Because you called him?”

            Sam shook his head. “No, I just feel like he’s here. Like I’m going to walk into a restaurant and he’ll be there. But if he were here he’d call me. So maybe whatever I thought the dreams were they were just a coincidence.”

            Dean turned onto a main artery, leaving the homes and yards and families behind. Fast food and strip malls were all around them.

           “Do you think that?” Dean asked.

           Sam looked at him. “No,” he admitted. He pulled out his sunglasses and put them on. Hiding, Dean thought.

           “Maybe it’s because Dad’s still alive.” Dean thought about it. “Maybe your mojo doesn’t work on the living.”

           Sam didn’t answer.

           Dean tried not to take it personally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is part of a series that begins with "By Fingertips". It's an AU where John and Dean got into an argument when Dean was fourteen and in the aftermath, Dean was picked up by Child Services. Dean was raised apart from from Sam. Dean became a fire fighter. Sam remained a hunter. 
> 
> The story of their reunion is told from Dean's point of view. Although the series starts with Sam as the much more skilled hunter, as it progresses, Dean's natural ability for strategy and his instinct for thinking on his feet is quickly revealed. (Dean always will be a better hunter than Sam in the end.) It also reveals that Sam has very different strategies for making a hunting life than John did, particularly in "Border Crossing" where Sam takes Dean on a trip to Mexico so Sam can make some cash.
> 
> But the outlines of the canon are unchanged. Although the relationship between Dean and Sam is different the monsters they fight are exactly the same and even some of the dialogue is word for word from the episodes.
> 
> This was inspired by several works of Fanfic, not least of all the wonderful Wolfpack by tabaqui and Brittle by sammehsayum, one of which has become head canon for me, and one of which made me think of how much I'd like to see a harder, grittier Supernatural.
> 
> The episode "Home" in Season 1 ends with Missouri Mosley returning to her house where John Winchester is waiting. He cannot bring himself to meet his boys. Since Dean wouldn't know that, I couldn't show it here, but it might make it more interesting to know that John is in fact in Lawrence.


End file.
